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Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski arrives for the weekly government meeting in Warsaw, Poland January, 2016. The new Polish government has stepped up efforts to address concerns in Brussels about civil rights ahead of a meeting on Wednesday at which the EU executive will review its moves to influence the constitutional court and the public broadcaster.

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The European Union announced Wednesday that it would be conducting a preliminary "rule of law" assessment in Poland. This announcement comes on the heels of changes to state media and the constitutional court system in the country.

Poland's conservative Law and Justice party replaced the more liberal Civic Platform party in 2015 elections. Since that time, the Law and Justice party and Poland's President Andrzej Duda have passed controversial legislation that significantly impacts Poland's media and court system.

"Looking back over the last quarter of a century, one of the biggest successes of European integration," says Frans Timmermans, the European Commission's First Vice-President, "is the transformation of our new member states in Central and Eastern Europe away from dictatorship to fully fledged democracies."

In announcing its recent investigation into the state of the rule of law in Poland, the EU hopes to prevent a regression into what it sees as tendencies its members abandoned years ago.

In late December, Poland's parliament passed legislation that could limit the power of the country's Constitutional Tribunal. The new legislation would require a two-thirds majority of Poland's fifteen justices, rather than a simple majority, to rule on constitutional cases. It also requires each justice to be present at every hearing, thereby hampering the court's ability to hear cases.

Earlier in December, the Law and Justice party faced suspicion over what critics saw as the hasty appointment of five justices and its refusal to acknowledge some of the appointments made by the previous administration.

The new media law provides for the immediate removal of current state radio and television heads from their positions, and transfers the ability to appoint new heads from an independent TV and radio committee to the treasury minister.

In 2014, Hungary's President Viktor Orbán showed what many see as a lack of concern for what officials like Mr. Timmermans consider the EU's fundamental democratic principles. In response to accusations that his government was stifling democracy with policies that intimidate the media and pack the courts, Mr. Orbán said, “I don’t think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations."

Consequences for Poland could be severe. If the media law is not repealed, Poland could lose its voting rights on the European Council. It could also lose its ability to participate in the much-beloved Eurovision song contest.

At this stage, however, the EU is not accusing Poland. Its decision to conduct a preliminary investigation of the situation in Poland was made out of a desire to open a dialogue, rather than indict. Said Timmermans in a press release, "Our aim is to solve these issues; our aim is not to accuse, to go into a polemic. Our aim is to solve the issues in a rational way based on our legal obligations."